Blue Ridge Shores residents intensify fight against Valley Link route

Blue Ridge Shores residents are pushing back after Valley Link’s updated transmission route moved the project much closer to the lakeside community, sharpening concerns about views, property values and the character of daily life around the water. At a June 8 town hall at the BRS Community Center, the Blue Ridge Shores Valley Link Action Committee laid out the latest route details and the next steps before the Virginia State Corporation Commission.

Valley Link is a roughly $1 billion, 115-mile, 765-kilovolt project run by Transource Energy, FirstEnergy Transmission and Dominion Energy. PJM approved it as a public necessity because of rising electricity demand, but residents at Blue Ridge Shores say the revised alignment changed the stakes for their neighborhood in a way they had not expected. Committee member Rick Kilcoyne said the updated plan brings the power lines within 500 feet of the community.

The committee has centered its objections on four issues: viewshed damage, property value impacts, health risks and other community effects. Members showed drone video taken from about 160 feet up to demonstrate how visible the towers could be from homes and from the water. They argued that proposed steel lattice structures, ranging from 135 to 160 feet tall, would industrialize a rural lakeside setting that many homeowners bought into for its open views and quieter land use.

The Blue Ridge Shores fight has become part of a broader countywide battle over how much infrastructure Goochland is willing to absorb. Valley Link’s updated routes were released on May 27, and local reporting says a second round of public meetings was scheduled throughout June before a final route was expected to go to the SCC in September. The project now is described as affecting nine Virginia counties, Campbell, Appomattox, Buckingham, Goochland, Fluvanna, Louisa, Orange, Spotsylvania and Culpeper, and potentially more than 600 landowners.

Goochland County has already taken formal action. The Board of Supervisors adopted a resolution on April 7 opposing the Joshua Falls-Yeat 765-kV line, warning that it would create miles of new transmission corridors, require significant permanently cleared right-of-way and use steel lattice structures approaching 160 feet in height. On April 14, the county approved $250,000 to support opposition efforts, and supervisors held a special meeting on May 28, when Valley Link representatives gave a presentation and answered questions.

The next phase now runs through the Virginia State Corporation Commission, where public comment is allowed and county officials in Goochland and Louisa have signaled they may seek more formal participation. Louisa County, which also opposed the project in March, sent letters on June 16 saying the version presented to communities no longer matched the project first approved by PJM in February 2025. For Goochland homeowners, the decision-making path is still open, but the route, the tower height and the SCC schedule will determine how much of Blue Ridge Shores is permanently changed.